by John Huston
It was a heavy day, all in all. We were warm. Our feet were warm. Our hands were warm. We skied in just 2 layers of long underwear each and then our Bergans wind clothing and that's enough to keep warm due to the heat we produce from the heavy exertion of pulling about 290 pounds behind us.
This sort of temperature, minus 50 below all day, really makes it difficult to haul these sleds. The friction is immense. It's kind of like hauling 290 pounds across a beach.
We saw the full orb of the sun today, which was a pleasing sight, but it also kind of made it colder because it heats up the upper layers of the air and pushes all the cold air towards Earth, right down towards us. However we are comfortable and can function. It is just a lot more to deal with as far as friction and also heating the tent a little bit.
We are traveling only a few nautical miles every day and we want to reassure people that that is normal for these sorts of trips. Anything above 4 miles a day on these sort of trips, in this time, the first few weeks, is a lot. It is very cold. There is a lot of friction. The ice is extraordinarily jumbled as it was today. And that makes us have to go back and pull one sled at a time through the jumbles and then over the relatively flat areas we can pull two sleds at one time.
But we're doing well. We're happy with our progress. We're happy that we are coping well with the cold and we don't feel that cold that often. It just takes a lot of work to handle everything. Everything has to be warmed up before it touches our body. So, the satellite phones, PDAs, even our down booties have to be warmed up before we put them on our feet. But we're happy and we're moving north and all progress is forward. So, thanks for listening and talk to you tomorrow.
Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 6, 2009
Location: N83° 14.665', W074° 03.906'
Time Traveled: 7 hours
Distance Traveled: 1.7 nautical miles
Distance to North Pole: 407 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -60°F
PM Temperature: -56°F
Wind: none